Glossary

The recognition process has a lot of terminology thrown around. This page exists to try and keep things simple.

Section 787 #

All your colleagues who are union members with Prospect. We organise the section, set up the reps, and do the negotiations with Skyscanner. This is the body that Skyscanner and colleagues will almost always interact with, rather than Prospect directly.

Members #

People who have joined the Prospect Union and Section 787. They're your colleagues, and include people outside the bargaining unit as well. Some of them have trained as reps, others were on the negotiating team that handled the agreement with Skyscanner.

Prospect #

A registered Trade Union in the UK, which your colleagues are members of. Prospect provides the infrastructure, training, and advice required for Section 787 to operate, as well as individual services offered to all members directly.

Reps/Representatives #

A “rep” or “representative” is one of your colleagues who has volunteered to represent you and other members in conversations with Prospect and Skyscanner. Reps also represent you in negotiations with Skyscanner, and are trained and supported by Prospect. Before and during recognition, reps are all volunteers, but after recognition will instead be elected by the members of Section 787.

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All reps receive training from Prospect. This training covers GDPR compliance, campaigning, and negotiations. After recognition, reps will go on to complete further training, which allows them to handle casework (such as supporting colleagues through grievance or disciplinary procedures) instead of requiring a Prospect full-time officer. Any member can request reps training from Prospect at any time, which will make them eligible to become reps.

Collective bargaining #

Collective bargaining is a process whereby an employer, such as Skyscanner, is required to negotiate with a trade union over topics covered by collective bargaining. This is not giving the union a veto over an employers decision, but instead a collaborative process to agree a mutually acceptable settlement on the topic in question. The minimum set of topics covered by collective bargaining in any recognition agreement is contractual pay, hours, and holidays.

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In the case of Skyscanner, this would mean that management would need to engage Section 787 to amend our base pay, hours, or holidays. In the majority of cases, unions and employers reach a mutually acceptable agreement, which is then approved by the members of the union, in this case Section 787. During this process, Skyscanner is required to provide all relevant data used to arrive at their offer, including financial information on the health of the business and its budgets.

Bargaining unit #

All collective bargaining and recognition agreements are based on the group of workers they represent - this is the bargaining unit, a defined group of workers within a business who will collectively bargain as a single group.

The current bargaining unit for Section 787 is everyone in Skyscanner Technology Ltd in the UK below level J. This is all engineers and related disciplines up to but not including Director level. Additional bargaining units might be formed in future, for example covering Skyscanner Ltd employees or J+ leaders. Unions in other locations, such as Barcelona, could also form their own bargaining units. Negotiations secured as a result of recognition would be over things that impact this group.

Recognition #

Recognition is when an employer agrees that a trade union can represent and negotiate on behalf of a group of workers in a workplace. It's the status that allows you to collectively bargain, together, with Skyscanner. Recognition allows you to negotiate together over the core terms of pay, holiday, and hours. Under the terms of the current agreement, should the ballot pass, this would also include being informed and consulted on changes to some Skyscanner policies, including the to-be-created Performance Management policy, Capability policy, Disciplinary policy, Grievance policy, and Training policy.

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In the context of the current proposed agreement, informing and consulting would mean that Skyscanner actively engages the union before making changes to the relevant policies, giving the union a chance to give feedback on any planned changes. Unlike collective bargaining on the core topics, this function is advisory, with the intent of making policy better or clearer for all parties.

Voluntary recognition #

This is the process we are currently undertaking. In voluntary recognition, the employer agrees to (subject to a ballot in our case) recognise the union voluntarily. The agreements made under voluntary are generally more favourable for both sides due to their flexibility, as they can contain anything the parties mutually agree to include.

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For our current agreement with Skyscanner, should the ballot pass, this flexibility enabled the union to include informing and consulting on certain key policies (in addition to the statutory collective bargaining on pay/hours/holidays), and enabled Skyscanner to have a way out of the agreement by allowing them to terminate the agreement with 3 months notice after the first year.

Statutory recognition #

Statutory recognition is the legal process by which a union can force an employer to recognise them for the purposes of collective bargaining, but only on the core topics of pay, hours, and holidays. This process is not desirable for either the employer or union - the agreement that results from statutory recognition is inflexible and limited to only the core topics.

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Statutory recognition would, in most cases, still require a ballot to pass, like the one we are undertaking now. The main difference is that it would be overseen by the Central Arbitration Committee, a government body which oversees statutory recognition in the UK. Withdrawing from a statutory recognition agreement is also far harder for the employer, requiring a derecognition ballot unless the union membership has dropped below the required threshold (10% of the bargaining unit).

Your reps do not believe that statutory recognition would be right for Skyscanner, if voluntary recognition can be achieved instead, to maintain a positive and collaborative relationship with the business.

The ballot #

The ballot is your decision on whether or not the union is recognised by Skyscanner. It is a simple majority vote of everyone who votes from the bargaining unit. Whichever option gets over 50% of the vote succeeds, with ties broken in favour of "No."

Pay Settlement #

A pay settlement is a negotiated deal on pay, which happens during pay adjustments. Whenever the company updates contractual pay (your base pay that is your salary, excluding bonuses and benefits), they would be required to engage in collective bargaining with Section 787.

No Prospect full-time officers will be directly involved in negotiations, just your colleagues, but negotiating reps may talk to them for advice.

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Under the current agreement, should the ballot pass, three reps would be elected to represent colleagues in the bargaining unit for these negotiations. During negotiations, the company can make a pay offer, which will be put to a vote of the membership for whether to accept the offer.

At no point in this process can the union force Skyscanner to change anything they do not want to. A union-negotiated settlement does not automatically mean Skyscanner must stop performance-related pay rises, but the union would insist any such outcomes are decidedly fairly and equitably. Section 787's policy on what we would like to see in pay settlements will be decided democratically at the first Annual General Meeting or Special General Meeting after recognition.

At no point will members of Section 787 have a better pay settlement than any other colleague in the bargaining unit - negotiated agreements are applied equally across the entire bargaining unit, ensuring reps have incentive to represent the whole unit, members and non-members alike. Being a member of the union is also not required to make your views known to the negotiating reps, but membership is required to vote on who those reps are.

Full-time officers #

Staff that are employed directly by Prospect to support the operation of the union. In the vast majority of cases, both members and non-members will not interact with full-time officers directly, but instead work with their reps. Prospect full-time officers provide support for Section 787, including training, campaigning support, and advice. Full-time officers will not be directly involved in future negotiations between Skyscanner and the bargaining unit, such as during pay settlements, after recognition.

Union Sections and Branches #

Prospect, like most trade unions in the UK, is organised into a hierarchy of Branches and Sections. The overall hierarchy is Prospect -> Branches -> Sections -> Bargaining Units.

Branches represent the members of a recognised business or group of businesses, such as Skyscanner as a whole should the ballot pass, or larger groups of members in unrecognised businesses, such as the Tech Workers branch. Sections are groups within a wider Branch, and operate under the policies of their Branch.

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Section 787 is currently a Section within the Tech Workers Branch of Prospect, but upon recognition would form a new Skyscanner Branch within Prospect. This would mean greater independence within Prospect, the ability to set our own policy, and the right to send delegates to Prospect National Conference, and so have a say in the wider Prospect movement. Section 787 would become the Skyscanner Technology Ltd Section of this new Branch.